President Baker—After the next address on the program, any further discussion of the subjects presented will be welcome.
It was gratifying to hear from California through the voice of Ex-Governor Pardee. One of the fortunate features of this Congress is the presence of men of prominence and influence from all sections of the country. Not merely the North and the East and the West are represented, but the sunny South; and we will be pleased to hear from a representative of the great State of Louisiana, who has always been deeply interested in Conservation, and is no less competent to speak on the subject now than when he wielded the power of Governor of that commonwealth. I have great pleasure in introducing Ex-Governor Newton C. Blanchard. (Applause)
Ex-Governor Blanchard—Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress: I am not on the program for a formal address, but I am here to supplement and endorse and support the admirable address delivered you a little while ago by Ex-Secretary Garfield. (Applause)
The times change, and men's opinions seem to change with them. On yesterday, in this Auditorium, I listened to a number of western Governors preaching the doctrine of State rights. For many years prior to the fateful year of 1861, and for four memorable years following it, the question of State rights was forcefully discussed in the forum of the Republic, and afterward practically settled on the battlefield (applause); and we of the South, who went down in that struggle to determine whether these rights of the States were paramount to the authority of the Federal Government, accepted the situation in good faith (great applause)—and we are now marching side by side with the North and the East and the West in that grand procession of progress that makes for the might and power of our great Republic. (Renewed applause)
It seems strange to a southern democrat like myself (applause) that "a voice should come out of the West" (laughter) telling us that this movement for Conservation must be abandoned by the Federal Government and relegated to the tender mercies of the western States (laughter and applause). Gentlemen of the Congress, was the question of State rights, the real, genuine doctrine of State rights, behind that demand? No; everyone of you know that it was not. It was a mere pretext; and the history of all nations is full of examples where strong men, having risen to ascendancy and ruling power and wanting to do something not exactly right (some usurpation of power or act of tyranny), first sought a pretext to justify it (applause). Why, then, does this voice come out of the West—a country that in the time preceding and following 1861 was known as "the wild and woolly West," and out of which at that time came not a whisper in advocacy of State rights? Why, now that the "wild and woolly West" has gone and magnificent commonwealths are there, now for the first time comes from the West, in former renegade garb or present robe of splendor, the cry that State rights must dominate the Conservation of the natural resources of the country? Gentlemen, some years ago a great citizen and soldier of our Republic was the candidate of a political party for the high office of President of the United States at a time when the tariff was the dominant issue, and becoming involved in the intricacies and embarrassing problems of the tariff, he declared, "the tariff is a local issue." Listening to the western Governors last afternoon, I perceived the same idea arising again, only in a different form; for the western Governors would make State rights a local issue.
The natural resources of the United States belong to all the people (applause), not alone to those who happen to live in the States where what is left of the public domain is principally situated today; you and I have just as much concern and interest and proprietorship in the natural resources on and in and springing from the public domain in Wyoming, in Montana, in Idaho, and in other western States, as have the people of those States themselves (applause). Gentlemen, as has been well said already during this Congress, the smaller the community the easier it is for special interests to control it; and that is the reason for this demand that the Conservation of the natural resources in the western States should be turned over to the States themselves. If you want Conservation to amount to anything—if you wish it to go forward in the fullness of development so that what is left of the public domain, of the coal lands, the phosphate lands, the oil and gas lands and the forests belonging to the United States may be preserved and conserved and utilized without present waste and handed down to our children and children's children without exhaustion, then I say the power that should lead in this movement is the mighty power of the Federal Government. (Applause)
When the distinguished and able gentleman who occupies the executive chair in the State of Montana was speaking yesterday, he claimed for his State "the earth and the fullness thereof" in respect to the Conservation of natural resources. He claimed that the movement there had antedated anything done by any other State or by the Federal Government, and to hear his eulogy of what Montana had done in this respect and his absence of expression as to what the Federal Government had done there, one might think, to use the vernacular of the day, that Montana was "the whole cheese" (laughter) in matters of conservation. And yet, when I met the gentleman today and asked him if the Federal Government had not been doing considerable work in Montana and expending large sums of money to irrigate the arid regions of that State, he admitted that it had. I asked him if the Federal Government had not expended many times more money in doing just that kind of Conservation work in his State than Montana had, and he admitted that it had. I asked him if what the Federal Government had already done in the way of irrigating the arid regions of his State and the projects now under way would not when completed yield to the farmer and the husbandman many hundreds of thousands of acres of valuable land, and he admitted it would and that the aggregate would be more than 600,000 acres (applause). That is what the Federal Government has done and is doing in one western State; and yet that same Governor, and others from the West, advocate that in the matter of Conservation the Federal Government should take a back seat, and permit the States to take the lead in Conservation.
Gentlemen, you heard today from the lips of Theodore Roosevelt a truth that struck me most forcibly, and that was this: It is not so much the question as to who shall take the lead in the matter of Conservation, whether it be the power of the States or the authority of the Federal Government, but which of these powers is best equipped and most able to keep what remains of the public domain and the natural resources from falling into the hands of the special interests and the monopolists (applause). Some of those western Governors, when the imputation was made that if the natural resources were turned over to the States in the manner proposed by them the special interests might handle their legislators, grew virtuously indignant; and yet all of us remember that it has been charged time and time again—and I think no one will have the temerity to deny it—that powerful interests with unlimited money have put forward their own selections for the high office of Senator of the United States and elected them (applause). That has been done repeatedly in the past; and is anyone here bold enough to say that even now there does not sit in the Senate of the United States men from the western States who owe their election to that position through the instrumentality of money? (Applause) No; that is true; and everyone of you knows it is true. If the Legislatures—and I do not mean to imply or to charge that the Legislatures of those particular western States are any more corrupt or more subject to the blandishments of corporations and men of means than the Legislatures of other States, whether they be North or South or East or West—can be induced through those instrumentalities to elevate men to high position, then I say those Legislatures can be controlled by the same means in other respects; and all of us know that special interests have always out a grabbing hand for what there is in the way of coal lands, in the way of water-power sites, in the way of phosphate lands and oil and gas lands. So I say, gentlemen of the Congress, we had better leave this matter of Conservation in the hands of the Federal Government to lead in this great work wherever the Conservation relates to the natural resources springing from the public domain. I am here to advocate that first; and I am here to say that in other respects, where the State authority finds jurisdiction, there should be cooperation between the States and the Federal Government. (Applause)
We have heard much from these western Governors in their speeches last afternoon relative to the waters in the rivers of their States, and the position was taken that the waters belong to the States. Flowing through the public domain, the land and the water-power sites would belong to the Federal Government, and where that is the case there is good ground for cooperation; but I am far from admitting that those waters belong to the States. There are some decisions of the Supreme Court that so declare, but such decisions were made by the courts under peculiar circumstances and facts differing from the circumstances and facts set before us in the matter of Conservation. Take the great Mississippi; to whom does the Mississippi river belong? Do its waters belong to the States through which those waters flow? Why, don't you know that every drop of water precipitated from the clouds, except that which is taken up by evaporation, every drop of rainfall from the top of the Alleghenies to the summit of the Rocky mountains finds its way through the innumerable channels and smaller streams to the great main trunk that we call the Mississippi river? Don't you know that it is the receptacle for the drainage of half of this great Republic of ours, that much of even the waters that fall in the western part of the great State of New York find their way into the channel of the Mississippi? All of the water thus gathered into the main channel flows by the cities of all the States from Minnesota down to Louisiana, my own State; and all of that water flows through the State of Louisiana to find lodgment at last in the Mexican Gulf. Now, does all the water thus garnered from this immense watershed to flow through the State of Louisiana belong to the State of Louisiana? If so, we don't want it! (Laughter and applause) It fell on these great western States, and too much of it comes down upon us, and we have had a great struggle, extending through many years, to keep that water off our land (laughter). I have known one great flood in Louisiana to cause destruction to the extent of ten millions of dollars. The State of Louisiana alone has expended, by State taxation and levee district taxation, more than thirty millions of dollars since the War in keeping the waters that fell upon your territory off our fertile lands (applause); and not being able to perform the herculean task ourselves, we have appealed, in season and out, to the Federal Government for aid, and a liberal hand has been extended to us. (Applause)
I was for years in Congress from Louisiana and for years a member and chairman of the committee on rivers and harbors of the House of Representatives, and I had to deal with this question. When I went first to Congress the idea prevailed there that the Federal Government had no constitutional authority to appropriate and expend money on Mississippi river except in aid of navigation; it was admitted that could be done under the commerce clause of the Constitution, but Congress denied that it owed any other duty to the river. Myself and others from the lower Mississippi valley, the lands of whose constituents were flooded every now and then by the great river, contended that Congress owed a two-fold duty to the river: to improve its navigation, and to prevent the waters from remaining a terror to those who lived in its lower valley (applause). Congress admitted it owed the first duty, but asked where there was any constitutional authority for the appropriation of public money to redeem private property from the flood and ravages of the river; and it took the representatives and senators from the lower valley States many years—I know I worked at it myself for ten years, in season and out, as a member of Congress—to demonstrate that the Federal Government owed it to the great river to prevent its floods as well as to improve its navigation. In answer to the demand for constitutional authority we cited a principle of law, recognized alike by the civil law system and by the common-law, which long antedated the Constitution of the United States, a principle embodied in a Latin maxim, "Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas"—so use your own that it shall not become an injury to others (applause). And we asked in that connection, "Who owns the Mississippi river? Does the Federal Government own it? If so, it is its property as a great feature of our country; and if the proprietorship of the river is in the Federal Government, then should not the Government so regulate and control its own that it will not injure or prove a detriment or damage to those who live in the lower valley?" (Applause) And that argument won.